This week, Donald Trump announced his picks for his Domestic Policy Council, and on that list is Katy Talento, an infectious disease epidemiologist who will work on health care policy. There’s still a few weeks before the President-elect is sworn into office, but Talento has already come under fire for claims she has made about birth control—specifically, that common methods like the Pill cause miscarriage and infertility—which are completely unsupported by medical research.

In two articles she wrote for The Federalist in 2015, Talento asserts that chemical (hormonal) birth control “causes miscarriage” and that “the longer you stay on the Pill, the more likely you are to ruin your uterus for baby-hosting altogether.” She also refers to hormonal birth control as “dangerous, carcinogenic chemicals.”

The truth, though, is that there is absolutely no connection between birth control and miscarriage or infertility. Also, while any medication always comes with risk of potential side effects, hormonal birth control is proven to be incredibly safe for most women and while there are some issues like an increased risk of blood clotting, most side effects are fairly benign, like breakthrough bleeding, moodiness, and skin changes. (For many women these things get better on birth control.) The hormones in the Pill are synthetic versions of what our bodies naturally produce, and have never been classified as carcinogenic.

Alhambra Frarey, M.D., ob/gyn and fellow at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and a Leadership Training Academy fellow at Physicians for Reproductive Health, tells SELF that the idea that birth control pills cause miscarriage is “absolutely unproven.” The American College of Gynecologists and Obstetricians also says that there is no connection between taking birth control before pregnancy and early pregnancy loss.

Alan B. Copperman, M.D., director of the division of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Mount Sinai Hospital and medical director of Reproductive Medicine Associates of New York, tells SELF that there’s also no evidence that you’ll miscarry if you get pregnant while taking the Pill (there’s about a 9 percent failure rate with typical use). “If a woman knows she’s pregnant, she should stop the birth control pill,” he says. “But there have been many women who have conceived while on the Pill over the years, and women can be reassured that there’s no common adverse effect on the babies,” he says. Frarey also confidently says accidentally continuing to take the Pill before learning you’re pregnant “has no ill effects on that pregnancy. None at all. There is no research behind that.” She adds, “We see women all the time who conceive on birth control pills and go on to have perfectly normal pregnancies.”

Talento’s claim is just as much a matter of semantics as biology. A miscarriage is defined as a spontaneous loss of a fetus before the 20th week of pregnancy, according to the National Institutes of Health. When gynecologists and obstetricians refer to miscarriages, they’re typically talking about when an embryo is implanted in the lining of the uterus, begins to develop, and after a number of weeks, does not survive. What Talento is calling a miscarriage is when a fertilized egg is unable to implant into the uterine wall in the first place. She says that hormonal birth control prevents implantation, and therefore, causes you to miscarry. Her statement is confusing and misleading.

To be honest, the whole mechanism of birth control—and how we talk about it—is confusing. While birth control pills do thin the uterine lining, it’s not the primary way they work. It may not even be a factor in pregnancy prevention at all for the majority of women. There are two other, much more important and impactful things that the Pill does (which is why Talento seems to think of it as a sort of third line of defense).

“Birth control pills work by suppressing ovulation primarily,” Frarey says. No egg, no baby. They also thicken cervical mucous, so that if ovulation does occur, sperm isn’t able to travel through the cervix to reach and fertilize that egg. The hormones in the Pill also thin the endometrium, the lining of the uterine wall, making implantation difficult. But there’s no way to know if this last step, what Tolento calls the “back-up plan” is ever employed. Yes, the thinning of the endometrium and its role in reducing the likelihood of implantation is listed on the FDA labels that state how birth control works, right along with suppressing ovulation and changing the cervical mucous, but there’s no evidence to show in how many women the thinned endometrium is responsible for preventing pregnancy each month. “In most patients, [the Pill] interferes with ovulation,” Copperman confirms. Just like it should.

It’s also very misleading—and scaremongering—to call a lack of implantation a miscarriage. A woman taking the Pill or another form of contraception is trying to prevent a pregnancy from happening. Miscarriage implies that a pregnancy has happened and then been ended, a heart-wrenching experience that happens in 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies. A spontaneous loss of an embryo or fetus can’t happen if there’s no embryo to begin with, and when a fertilized egg never implants, an embryo never begins to grow. (Some believe that life starts at conception and consider it an abortion when the fertilized egg is prevented from implanting, but even then, it’s inaccurate to call it a miscarriage because, by the medical definition of the word, miscarriage is the loss of a developing fetus, and before implantation there is no fetus.)

The claim that hormonal birth control “ruins” the uterus or impacts fertility is also completely unfounded. In fact, Copperman says there are probably positive long-term reproductive impacts of taking the Pill. “Women who are on the birth control pill are at lower risk of having any pelvic infections scar their fallopian tubes,” he says, which is a common cause of infertility. For example, someone on the Pill exposed to chlamydia has a smaller chance of that infection developing into pelvic inflammatory disease, an infection that can cause scarring in the reproductive system and damage fertility, because the infection had a tougher time getting through the cervical mucous and infecting the tubes, Copperman explains.

And hormonal birth control, and family planning in general, promote better reproductive health and pregnancy outcomes. “We know that unplanned pregnancies have worse health outcomes,” Frarey says. Plus, contraception allows women to get their health—reproductive and otherwise—in a good place before trying to conceive. “Women taking the birth control pill often have lighter, less painful periods, fewer unwanted pregnancies, a lower incidence of STDs, and a significantly lower lifetime incidence of ovarian cancer,” says Copperman. All of these things help fertility and increase the chance of having a healthy, successful pregnancy.

When it comes to the safety of birth control, both doctors (and every other ob/gyn we’ve spoken to for countless stories on reproductive health) note that yes, birth control does come with some side effects. But overall, for most women, it is extremely safe.

“There are definitely no carcinogenic chemicals in birth control,” Frarey says. The Pill is usually a combination of synthetic progesterone and estrogen, or progesterone only if you take the minipill. “Both of those hormones have been used safely in birth control pills since the dawn of the Pill, for decades now.” The doses of hormones have also decreased steadily over the years, as evidence has shown that we don’t need quite as high doses as researchers first thought. Research has shown a higher risk of breast and cervical cancer associated with long-term use of the Pill, but that does not mean that progesterone and estrogen are cancer-causing chemicals. Plus, the Pill decreases the risk of endometrial, ovarian, and colon cancers. Overall, Frarey says birth control is “incredibly safe.”

She also notes that when considering the side effects, it’s important to compare it to the risks of pregnancy. “There can be some risk for some patients of blood clot formation when taking the birth control pill. But the level of hormones you have when you’re pregnant is so much higher,” Frarey explains, “and that risk of developing a blood clot is so much higher.”

At the end of the day, the truth remains that contraception, and the Pill specifically, has revolutionized women’s health care. “Being on the Pill, with very few exceptions, can promote women’s health,” Copperman says. Understanding the limitations and risks is important, but we can assure you those don’t include miscarriage or infertility.